Market perception of any product may be influenced by marketing elements such as the brand, packaging, advertising (TV or any other media), events, promotions and more. Marketing elements, such as those mentioned, are intended to generate a response from consumers that will (hopefully) eventually lead to sales of the product.
A problem with the provision of marketing elements, is that there is no way at present of accurately quantifying their effectiveness at delivering product sales. Marketing elements may generate an unconscious emotional response from a consumer that will eventually lead to sales of a product. Presently, however, it is very difficult to measure this response. If one was to ask a consumer how much they were affected by an advertisement, it is extremely unlikely that they would be able to provide an accurate response, because absorption of the advertising message and its resultant effect on their purchase of the product happens unconsciously.
Marketing personnel that are charged with the responsibility of converting marketing elements into product sales are typically unable to measure the outcome. This may result in organizations not knowing how much of their investment budget to allocate to marketing in order to convert it to the best possible return on that investment, especially over the long term.
It is known, to attempt to correlate marketing spend and sales. This marketing return on investment method is generally known as Market Mix Modeling. Because it only analyses marketing spend and sales, however, it is frequently erroneous or incomplete. It fails to make any measure of the effectiveness of any marketing element on the (often unconscious) consumer response that may eventually lead to sales.
Consumer perceived benefits are those generally unconscious benefits that a consumer perceives they are obtaining from purchase and/or consumption of the product. For example, a consumer perceived benefit associated with the product category Vodka, is that of “socialization” i.e. how effectively consumers feel a Vodka product facilitates social interaction. There are other consumer perceived benefits for Vodka. Consumer perceived benefits vary from product category to product category.
In this specification the term “product” encompasses a particular good and/or service associated with one or more marketing elements. Examples of a product is the soft drink marketed as “Coca-Cola” (™), the alcoholic beverage marketed as “Johnnie Walker” and the car marketed as “Aston-Martin DB9”. The term “marketing element” includes the brand (e.g. trade marks or the logo), packaging, finished advertising (in any media), promotions, events, innovations (e.g. new brands, sub brands or line extensions) and anything else that is associated with the promotion of a product, as well as unfinished branding, packaging, ideas, concepts, advertising (in any media) and anything else that is intended to promote a product in the future. In this specification, the term “product category” encompasses a set of related products.